Abruptly the air, the day, the scene about her subtly changed. She felt
a closeness and a tremor, a certain brooding terror in the languid
sombre winds. The gold of the sunlight faded to a sickly green, and the
earth was black and burned. A moment she paused and looked back; she
caught the man's silhouette against the tall white pillars of the
mansion and she fled deeper into the forest with the hush of death about
her, and the silence which is one great Voice. Slowly, and mysteriously
it loomed before her--that squat and darksome cabin which seemed to
fitly set in the centre of the wilderness, beside its crawling slime.
She paused in sudden certainty that there lay the answer to her doubts
and mistrust. She felt impelled to go forward and ask--what? She did not
know, but something to still this war in her bosom. She had seldom seen
Elspeth; she had never been in her cabin. She had felt an inconquerable
aversion for the evil hag; she felt it now, and shivered in the warm
breeze.
As she came in full view of the door, she paused. On the step of the
cabin, framed in the black doorway, stood Zora. Measured by the squat
cabin she seemed in height colossal; slim, straight as a pine,
motionless, with one long outstretched arm pointing to where the path
swept onward toward the town.
It was too far for words but the scene lay strangely clear and sharp-cut
in the green mystery of the sunlight.
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